Why has faith in government health agencies never been lower? Because conflicts of interest (COIs) have never been higher.
At the FDA, concerns about drugmakers “buying” drug approvals go back to passage of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) in 1992. Since then, the many doctors with research and speaker grants, drug stocks, and past employment with drugmakers heighten concerns. Worse, many major drug trials that claim to show “benefits,” like those with GLP-1 drugs today (repeated *ipso facto* by mainstream media), are funded by the tested drugs’ makers. Did anyone expect the tested drug would fail?
Conflicted FDA commissioners
In March of 2017, President Trump chose Dr. Scott Gottlieb to serve as FDA Commissioner. Dr. Gottlieb “has been a frequent consultant to drug companies, serving on advisory boards for large pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Daiichi Sankyo,” and “paid millions by industry,” wrote the New York Times.
But Dr. Robert Califf, the FDA commissioner under both Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, made Dr. Gottlieb look like an amateur. “Many of us consult with the pharmaceutical industry, which I think is a very good thing,” said Dr. Califf on PBS in 2004. His financial links to drugmakers are astounding.
Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the FDA commissioner who preceded Dr. Califf, also came under the ethical microscope after she left office in 2015. Her alleged COIs were especially ironic in light of her lamentation in 2011 that the government could not find enough experts not funded by drugmakers for advisory committees.
Industry funds the CDC Foundation
Few are aware of the existence of the CDC Foundation, a separate, nonprofit organization, established by Congress in 1992 to seek private-sector donations and public-private partnerships.
According to Netsuite, Wells Fargo, Kaiser Permanente, 3M, Bayer, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are among donors. In 2018, members of the House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee questioned the CDC and NIH Foundations’ anonymous donors.
Concerns about CDC COIs came to a head in 2017 when the newly appointed director, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, was found to have accepted $1 million from Coca-Cola while serving as health commissioner of Georgia. (The following year, planned NIH studies on alcohol and opioid effects were scrapped because of industry funding.)
Other conflicted CDC directors
Dr. Fitzgerald was forced to resign from the CDC after only six months because of tobacco stocks she had bought. Before her, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden was also tarnished with a COI. During a 2015 influenza outbreak, Dr. Frieden told reporters that the CDC had “compelling evidence” that Tamiflu (oseltamivir) worked for flu, his financial links to its maker notwithstanding. The CDC was simultaneously conducting an awareness campaign with Tamiflu recommendations.
And who can forget how Dr. Julie Gerberding, who preceded Dr. Frieden as CDC director, led efforts against the H5N1 flu before becoming head of Merck Vaccines the same year she left the government?
More recently, Dr. Robert Redfield, CDC director until 2021, was accused of misrepresenting experimental drug data he published.
Conflict temptations
There are three pharma lobbyists for every Congress member, and more than two-thirds of Congress members cashed a pharma campaign check in 2020. Medical journals now unapologetically publish “research” funded by drugmakers that they once would have eschewed. Are they replacing the ads they lost to TV, which has become a main media revenue stream? It has never been more lucrative to be financially linked to Big Pharma––or more dangerous for the trusting patient.
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and the author of Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies and Born With a Junk Food Deficiency.
